


Operation: Drop It Like It's Hot

by orphan_account



Category: Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: F/M, Flowers, Ghosts, Haunted Houses, I love Buzzfeed Unsolved so when it came through that I could write a BU thing I was STOKED, Ronan and Adam are mentioned, TRC Secret Santa, buzzfeed unsolved au, every fact in here about haunted houses is made up, ocs are minor, they have jobs! they have jobs at buzzfeed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-18
Updated: 2017-12-18
Packaged: 2019-02-16 17:12:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,122
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13058484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: But it's just you and Ronan that calls it that.The Flower House is only another assignment and only another ghost; maybe it’s something about the aesthetic and the soft moonlight that makes Blue feel so... like this.





	Operation: Drop It Like It's Hot

**Author's Note:**

  * For [bleulily (winterfells)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/winterfells/gifts).



> [Here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w0VaGbkzQZ8) is some mood music: Alps by Novo Amor & Ed Tullett!

This was gonna be _the_ most aesthetic bullshit she’d ever done in her life. Sure it was for the capitalism and the views and the pursuit of a simple distraction for the masses, but who cared? _Aesthetic._

 

“Say hi to the camera,” she told Gansey. When he turned to look at her, and coincidentally the little red dot that said _we’re recording,_ she waved. Being an ass was one of life’s simple pleasures, and honestly to be honest, she deserved a lifetime of that.

 

“For why,” Gansey asked, as grandiloquently as ever.

 

“For luck,” Blue said. She tapped the camera she held, though not enough for the image to wobble. “And, you know, the viewers that love us very much.”

 

“Hi,” Gansey deadpanned. “I’m going to make you keep that in post-production. Our viewers that love us very much. You ever go on our tag in Tumblr?”

 

“I didn’t know you knew what Tumblr even is. Thought you were confined to, I don’t know, Facebook,” Blue said cheerily. She zoomed in on the roses planted under the windows of the house. “Think those are real?”

 

Just like that, Gansey switched to his professor mode. “Most likely. Reports only confirm that the flowers inside are the ones to look out for.”

 

“Wait. Wait, wait. Look out for? You said this place is harmless.” For the first time that night, and the first time in a while, Blue felt a spark of panic.

 

“I mean—yeah. Ha. They’re fine.” Gansey shot her the special look that meant _turn off the equipment for a second, this should be off-record._ Blue did so. “For your… mirror-ness. The flowers might suck up your energy, like… you know. I don’t want you collapsing in there.”

 

“Yeah, I’m holding the camera. That would be tragic.”

 

Gansey frowned and backtracked to stand with Blue. “I mean it. I don’t know what I’d do without you. All joking aside, seriously—do you think you’ll be alright in there?”

 

Blue searched his eyes. If he thought she would be fine, then she would be. If he didn’t, then they’d pull. He had left his glasses behind (“because it’ll be nighttime and neither of us will be able to see anything anyway”). Blue still couldn’t read what he thought, even with that extra barrier removed.

 

“They’re flowers. They can’t do anything to hurt me,” she decided. Quickly, before he could argue, she pecked him on the cheek. It was a bolder move than it seemed: they had tried kissing again after Gansey was brought back, and so far he hadn’t died again. Still, they contained it to short pecks, and rarely on the lips. Some people they knew (read: Ronan, who kissed Adam a _lot)_ questioned if they were even dating.

 

“Let’s set up to do that monologue out here,” Blue said. “Otherwise we’ll have to do it before we go to bed, and we’ll be tired and grumpy. Got your notes?”

 

Gansey fished his phone out of his pocket and displayed it to Blue. “They’re even in monologue for my convenience.”

 

Blue frowned and used her free hand to pat around Gansey’s butt pockets. “No notebook? You’ve usually got fifteen of them busting out of your seams.”

 

“Not this time,” Gansey said. “Traded paper and pen for lots and lots of data. I can switch out from where I’m writing to the entire internet with two button presses and some fancy thumb maneuvering.”

 

“We both know books and paper is far superior to the internet,” Blue said, maybe more disapproving than she wanted it to be. “Is that where you’re getting your Tumblr tags? The internet is just a distraction and _lies.”_

 

“And old manuscripts from the eighties aren’t?” Gansey challenged. “I’ll get the studio light and the tripod from the car. You got the chairs and everything ready?”

 

Blue sighed. The camera swung from her hand heavily. “Yeah.” She tried to inject some pep into her next sentence, though she wasn’t sure why she tried. “Operation: Ghost Flowers Haunted Mansion (but we just call it operation drop it like it’s hot but it’s just you that calls it that, and Ronan) is a go.”

 

* * *

 

“The aptly-named Flower House was built in eighteen forty-five for the illustrious John Michael Peters and his family, though it was abandoned at the turn of the century for reasons unknown,” Gansey said. “Reports say that an abundance of flowers appeared overnight not even a day after the Peters’ had left town. They refused to say why they had left, and Mrs Kennedy Brownell, who lived across the street, noted in her diary, “...none entered John’s house, not from the back way nor from the front, for I would have seen it, given that I was sitting in the attic room knitting all day long. We are all questioning, why flowers? They are so cold to the touch, and never seem to wilt and fade.”

 

Blue shook her head minutely in the direction of the camera. The audience always loved a skeptic. She’d scrolled through their tag on Tumblr as well, and honestly, some of the ideas those people came up with were hilarious. Hilarious and awesome. If only they knew the truth about her and Gansey—that they’d seen more magic than anyone living on earth, except maybe the ladies of 300 Fox Way and the beech tree in the backyard that still hadn’t given up Artemus.

 

“Now, let’s get to the theories,” Gansey said.

 

Belatedly, Blue spoke. “No, wait—Kennedy Blacklock.”

 

“Brownell.”

 

“Yeah, her. That’s such an ambiguous diary entry—I mean, who went in there to report on the flowers? Who even goes into their neighbor’s abandoned house the day they leave? That’s, that’s like asking to be stolen from.”

 

“Breaking news: Kennedy Brownell was a dirty, rotten thief.”

 

Blue rolled her eyes. “Maybe not her, but definitely her neighbors. They let the house sit for, I don’t know, a day or two, then all at once decide to break in and check out the flowers? I don’t know. Seems fishy to me.”

 

“I mean—yeah. Pretty fishy.” Gansey stuck his tongue out at Blue, knowing it would be edited out in post-production by the rolling text. “Now, seriously, let’s get to the theories. The first theory is that the Peters were driven out of their home by the sudden appearance of these flowers—cold to the touch, as Mrs Brownell said—and that someone broke into their home.”

 

“Someone was out to steal their gold,” Blue crooned, getting sort of into the whole charade.

 

Gansey wheezed.

 

“I mean—seriously—these Peters were rich, right?” Gansey nodded silently, still softly wheezing. “What rich person doesn’t have gold in their house? And like, you can refrigerate flowers so they’re cold and they last longer—”

 

“Not all rich people,” Gansey choked out.

 

“What?”

 

“Not all rich people have gold in their homes,” Gansey said. “I mean, we do, but that’s just because—” He cut himself off. “Huh.”

 

“Because you’re rich!” Blue said, jumping a little in her chair. She laughed a little. It would be called a (wheeze) in post-production.

 

“Back to the theories!” Gansey cried. He raised his phone up in some sort of impassioned motion and smacked it back down in his knee, as he would with his notebook. Blue was surprised the phone didn’t break.

 

“If it turns out someone stole all their gold I’m going to laugh,” Blue threatened.

 

“No one stole their gold,” Gansey said. “Maybe. But! There are no reports of anything stolen from the Flower House, not even in recent times. Not many people visit, and those that do are respectful in the place and try not to move anything.”

 

“Which means we’ll be sleeping on the floor in the living room,” Blue said, allowing her less-than-thrilled attitude to coat her words.

 

“Respect the Flower House. Respect the flower ghosts.”

 

“Tell us about the other theories, you nub,” Blue muttered. “Since we all know no one stole anything from the house and Kennedy Brownell is a dirty, rotten liar, and probably fudged all the stuff so she could take the gold.”

 

“Let’s get back to the theories, for like the fifteenth time,” Gansey said. “Theory number two says that the Peters kept a secret—” Here, he paused. And paused for a very long time.

 

“A secret what?” Blue asked. She leaned forward on her knees. “Gansey?”

 

Gansey blinked. “I’m—sorry.”

 

Blue considered getting up for a moment, then Gansey collected himself, and everything was okay again. There was a different dimension in moments like that, where Blue caught a glimpse into a world where things went wrong, or where things went incredibly right.

 

“Theory two says that the Peters had another child other than their two, Lucy and Mary,” Gansey continued, as if nothing was wrong. “A daughter named Liz. She had mental problems, so the Peters just—locked her in the basement.”

 

Blue scoffed. “That’s despicable.”

 

“Yeah,” Gasney muttered.

 

“Can you imagine if—I mean, that was kind of a thing in Harry Potter, right? With Harry, and with Dumbledore’s sister, Arabelle or whatever.” The words spilled out of her almost involuntarily. She hoped the autopilot she was on knew enough about Harry Potter to not offend the geeks on the internet. “Can you imagine if someone tried that shit today? It’s horrible.”

 

“I know,” Gansey said.

 

“People like that shouldn’t—shouldn’t be parents. Shouldn’t have kids. They don’t deserve anyone or anything beautiful in their lives.”

 

Gansey let loose a soft, helpless laugh. “Harsh.”

 

Her heart felt tight. “It’s true. It’s what I think, is all.” She squeezed her hands into fists. If only people could treat other people right—like _human beings—_ maybe she wouldn’t be so angry as she always was.

 

“Well. So this kid, Liz, she kept herself entertained by drawing pictures of flowers and by arranging dried flowers in there. It was the only thing she could do in the long hours down there. When she got older, she got sick of the life she was forced to live and… she killed herself, somehow.”

 

“Shit,” Blue muttered.

 

“Yeah,” Gansey said. “There are no reports of her ghost haunting the premises, but apparently the flowers she loved so much appeared overnight in the house. Mrs Peter burst into tears when she saw a vase of roses on her bedside table, because as she said in her diary, “... I knew what had happened to the girl when I saw the red, red roses sitting there. I had not placed them where they stood on the bedside, and I suppose still stand, for I had not touched them, and neither has John nor Mary nor Lucy…. The girl’s body was indeed lying there, John said, and would not respond to his shouts or shakes.”

 

“So this girl, Liz. She was a real person? Not some invented theory-thing?” Blue asked. She found herself a stalwart supporter of this Liz all of a sudden. It happened sometimes when she was reading stories, too: she would pick one character and her brain would decide _ah yes, this one is my favorite._

 

“Seems like,” Gansey said. “I found a copy of Mrs Peter’s diary online but only skimmed it. If we had had more time, you know I would have been on that shit like flies on honey. She doesn’t often talk about Liz, and when she does, it’s only by calling her “the girl”.”

 

“Depressing,” Blue said.

 

“Yes.”

 

“Any other theories?”

 

“Not really,” Gansey said, turning his phone upside down as if he expected loose leaf paper to fall out. It happened sometimes when he used his notebook. Only _once_ had one of those slips of papers held anything relevant to the case, and yet Gansey did it every time. For luck. There was always so much luck involved in these things.

 

“Then it’s time to go in,” Blue said, springing to her feet and clapping her hands together in one fluid motion. She clicked the camera off. “Help me dismantle the set. I’ll camera for the first floor, but you’ve got basement and second floor.”

 

“Nuh-uh,” Gansey said instantly. He lifted the two studio lights and brushed dirt off of the stands. “I’m going to drop it in the basement. It’s too dark. You do basement and first, and I’ll do second and third.”

 

Blue paused. “There’s a third floor?”

 

“Look up,” Gansey said wryly.

 

Blue counted two impressive and tall rows of windows. “Two stories.”

 

Gansey laid a hand on Blue’s shoulder and pointed up at the roof. “Servants quarters up on the third story. I have some cool story for there when we get back in the booth.”

 

Blue playfully smacked Gansey’s stomach. “You tease.”

 

He made a kissy face over his shoulder at her, picking up the studio lights again. “You love it.”

 

“I do,” Blue conceded, too softly for it to matter.

 

* * *

 

There wasn’t much in the house. Yeah, _aesthetic,_ and Blue’s Tumblr blog would be very happy for a very long time. Most of the flowers in the house were tributes to Liz left by people around town, and very real, and also wilting everywhere. In the dark, it was less “soft sunlight” aesthetic Blue liked, but still, the moonlight through the half-wilted roses… there weren’t quite words to describe how soul-striking it was.

 

The basement was nothing special.

 

Up on the second floor, Blue felt a small tug at her mirror. Behind the camera, she turned to look at a brilliantly red bundle of carnations. Unlike most of the flowers crowding all available surfaces and scattered around the floor, these carnations sat perfectly bunched together on the shelf underneath an old silver mirror, bound by a yellow ribbon. Blue did not touch them.

 

“It’s gorgeous in here,” Gansey said. “Not much ghostly activities, though the aesthetic is rather top shelf.”

 

“Yeah,” Blue said, still looking at those carnations.

 

“But we still haven’t gotten to the third floor,” Gansey teased. That drew Blue’s attention—she scoffed and demanded knowledge, the memory of the carnations swept out of her mind.

 

* * *

 

Gansey had gotten the sleeping bags from the car (they were buried under the chairs) and laid them out all by himself. Blue kept herself occupied by setting up the recording and ignoring the ghost of the girl in the corner.

 

She had expected someone young, a small child barely older than ten, perhaps dressed in a tattered nightgown with lank black hair. Liz was around 15 (Fifteen and a half, miss, right on the mark), blonde with a bun (I do it up myself, miss, I’m quite deft even without a mirror), wearing a deep purple dress (Mother brought it back from Boston, isn’t it quite lovely, miss?).

 

Blue had half a mind to tell Liz that she shouldn’t be around here to be picked up on by the recorders, otherwise Molly back in HQ would be obligated to put that in the video for Youtube. Liz and her flowers would get no peace then—this would become some sort of tourist trap, like Winchester house or that New Orleans cemetery they went to once.

 

“I think I shall be alright to have some company here,” Liz said, picking up on Blue’s worries. “It is so lonely sometimes, though I do have my flowers to keep my company, and Sarah and Joan upstairs to knit and talk with. They say they would enjoy the company as well.”

 

Blue straightened from placing a microphone on the arm of the couch. “Why didn’t we see you in the basement earlier?”

 

Liz was vaguely taken aback. “I do not often stay in the basement, miss, for it holds so many bad memories for me. I like walking around upstairs, especially here in the living room, and the sitting room when the sun is bright in the morning. There are so many flowers. I never was up here often back when Mother and Father and my dear sisters were here. Do you believe they will be back soon? It has been quite some time, I believe.”

 

Time would probably move slowly here. “I don’t know,” Blue said, “I think they’re gone for good.”

 

Liz smiled. “I’m glad. That means I can stay up here as long as I want.”

 

“All of your drawings are in the basement, though,” Blue said.

 

“Well, yes,” Liz said, rather reluctantly. “Though I do not mind. Joan says she will give me a paper and some colored pencils once she remembers where she stored them. I believe they are in the chest upstairs in the closet, but I shall let her retrieve them.”

 

“Yes,” Blue said.

 

“Blue?” Gansey called. “Who are you talking to?”

 

Blue turned to call “Liz” back down at him, but when she turned back, Liz was gone. “Never mind.”

 

Gansey appeared at the edge of a doorway. “Liz?”

 

“She was pretty normal,” Blue said. “I don’t know why she was put away. Very well-balanced and everything.” This was a fair assessment, though the only kind of crazy person she knew was Ronan, and any odd heroine of Victorian-era novels. And Gwenllian. Artemus maybe? Persephone perhaps? Calla definitely.

 

“No clue,” Gansey said cheerily, as Liz whispered in Blue’s ear, “I had an affinity for women, and enjoyed their… _romantic_ company much more than I prefered most mens.”

 

“Huh,” Blue said, because she had nothing else to say.

 

* * *

 

Blue curled up on her side. Her eyes were open, though her brain had mostly shut off, thinking about Liz and Mrs Peter and Mrs Brownell and Molly back in HQ and her true love lying next to her but not really _next_ to her.

 

Gansey’s voice came soft and quiet through the room, as natural as the breeze. “You ever think about Noah?”

 

Blue closed her eyes, as soft as everything else in that house.

 

Noah. Of _course_ she thought about Noah. His haunted eyes, and all the times she saw the shadow on his face, and how big he could get and how small he felt.

 

“Yeah,” Blue said. “You?”

 

“A lot,” Gansey confessed. He shifted in his sleeping bag; Blue only heard it. She didn’t think she could stand to look at anyone right now. “The internet would have a conniption if they knew the truth. About us—about you, about Noah. About Cabeswater.”

 

“We are not doing an episode on Cabeswater. Ronan would kill us.”

 

Gansey laughed softly. “I know. Still.”

 

“We’re not putting Cabeswater on the internet.”

 

“I know,” Gansey sighed.

 

Eventually, after a while, Gansey fell asleep, his soft breathing echoing around the living room. Blue counted his breath, like counting sheep, until she fell asleep, wishing she was bold enough to kiss him again.

 

 

 

 

 

END

 

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed the aesthetics. 
> 
> This was written for the [Raven Cycle Secret Santa](https://trc-exchange.tumblr.com/), and also for the great [Moira](http://bleulily.tumblr.com/) over on Tumblr! You're so well-put-together I'm jelly. I am honored to be able to write something for you!
> 
> Comments and kudos are always appreciated! Come talk to me on [Tumblr!](https://reaadmydumbfanfiction.tumblr.com/) ~~blease. this author is dying~~


End file.
